Page 27 of When Worlds Collide (Between Worlds #2)

“Don’t leave,” he whispered against my skin. “Just… stay.” And suddenly I knew, this wasn’t desire, it was panic. As if the only reason I was here was because I desired him. He was trying to fix something with sex that he didn’t know how to fix with words.

“Baby,” I reached my hands up to cup his face, to force his eyes back to mine. “I’m not going to leave.”

“Why not?” The hard edge to his voice made me recoil slightly, but all I could do was push my head further back into the pillows.

“Why wouldn’t you?” He laughed, but there was no mirth to it. His head hung down, dislodging my hands and breaking eye contact with me, his hair obscuring his face.

“Joon-”

“I can’t change who I am.” It sounded like a moan, and I tried again to put my hands on his face, but he pulled away, pulling a piece of my heart with the rejection.

I swallowed, my pulse fluttering like a trapped bird in a cage as I carefully chose my words, and tried to understand how this had gone so bad, so fast.

“I don’t want you to change.”

“Don’t you?” He raised his head, warm eyes turned to cold steel in the darkness of the room. “It feels like you’re asking me to.”

My brow hurt from how hard I was frowning. I was trying to keep up with the mercurial speed of whatever was happening here, but–

“I don’t understand what’s happening.” My voice shook as I felt my eyes prickle with frustrated tears.

With a sound that was half-growl and half-Korean, Jihoon flung himself off me so fast he could have been a shadow.

He sat on the edge of the bed, his bare back a stark white in the sparse light that dripped in through the window.

I sat up, pulling the sheet up to cover my nakedness as I reached a hand toward him, but then pulled back.

For a while, the only sound in the room was the rain that steadily clashed with the window, melodic little beats that drummed a steady rhythm.

Just as I opened my mouth – to say what, I didn’t know, Jihoon rose from the bed, picked up his discarded sweat pants from the floor and pulled them on.

“Where are you going?” I asked in a panic, visions of him leaving flashing through my mind.

“I need water.” He didn’t turn around, but closed the door behind him, leaving me alone in the dark, quiet room lit only by street lamps eleven floors below us. One floor for every year he was asking me to put my life on hold, and not for the first time, I wondered if this was something I could do.

Several times I got up to seek Jihoon out, but each and every time, I sat back down, unsure of what to say to him. Provided he hadn’t left the apartment entirely.

Remembering that he only lived upstairs had put the fear in me – the realisation that he may actually have done just that.

But then I saw a light flick on from underneath the door, and I knew that if nothing else, he was still physically here with me.

Feeling a sudden chill, I pulled on a t-shirt at random from the suitcase that sat at the foot of the bed, open with clothes scattered around it as though it had exploded.

It was only as it fell down past my thighs that I realised it was one of Joon’s shirts.

I wiped away a trickle from my cheek in surprise, not having realised it was even there until it was half-way down my face.

Mixed in with the sadness was frustration.

Frustration and confusion. His apprehension was understandable, his dislike of the media more so, but what hurt the most was the utter disregard he’d had for how any of this might affect me.

He was so afraid of how the media might treat him, or how the public might treat me, that he didn’t see how eleven years of secrecy might affect me.

How it made me feel. How it minimised me.

It reminded me of something Becka had accused me of once: how small I’d made myself to fit in with his world. I’d done that to myself, but I’d be damned if I’d allow anyone to do it to me.

I stood up, wiped my face with the hem of his shirt, and strode to the door, opening it between one heartbeat and the next.

He was sitting on a stool at the kitchen counter, an unopened bottle of water in front of him.

I watched him from the doorway for a moment.

He didn’t notice me, and that made my stomach lurch uncomfortably, because he always seemed to be so in-tune with me, watching me from across the room, twining his fingers with mine, or just holding onto my shirt.

But seeing him sit there – it was like I wasn’t here.

I went to stand beside him. He looked up, shocked at seeing me there – or perhaps at whatever he saw on my face.

“No,” I said, my voice as firm as if I’d stomped my foot.

His eyebrows rose. “No?”

“You do not get to throw that in my face, and then storm off.”

Jihoon swivelled on the stool, turning to face me fully. “I did not ‘storm’-”

“You did,” I interrupted. “You accused me of trying to change you, and then you punished me by leaving me a-alone.” My voice wobbled, but I leashed it so tightly it was in danger of snapping.

“Jihoon, I crossed the world for you. I changed my whole life for you – for us. If anyone is changing, it’s me.”

A tear slid down my cheek, but it was out of frustration, and I impatiently wiped it away, trying to ignore the way his face crumpled as he watched.

“You do not get to decide our future without involving me in the conversation.” More tears fell now, and I couldn’t tell which emotion triggered them. I ignored them.

Jihoon reached for me, a hand rising as though my tears were a magnet he couldn’t not be drawn to. I batted his hand aside.

“Your life may be bigger than mine, but mine counts, too. I chose you, Jihoon. I chose you, with my eyes open. I knew who you were when we started this, and I chose you knowing what it meant, but that didn’t waive my right to be your equal.

” My voice was catching now, like stray threads on splinters, cracking my words open.

“I choose you, Jihoon, and I need you to choose me too, because I need you too much. Is that clear, Baek Jihoon? I can’t leave you, because I need you. And I need you to need me, too.”

I couldn’t continue, sobs had replaced my words, and it was all I could do to pull air into my lungs through the heaves that threatened to split me apart.

But, as my words stopped, hanging in the air between us, echoing strands from a last song, he stood, knocking them to the ground, wrapping his arms around me, and holding me together before I could fall to pieces.

He held me until my legs gave out under the weight of eleven years and all the reassurances he couldn’t give me.

He carried me back to bed, lying down with me in his arms, my tears soaking his chest, and the thought that kept me crying, an unrelenting sea of bitterness and fear that coated the back of my throat, was not the fear that he did not love me – because of that I was absolutely certain – but that he still may not choose me.